When I reach the taxi rank it is easy to find the right car. The stereotypical taxi driver is aggressive, disrespectful and violent and most times I wouldn’t want to be caught in a dark alley with one, but today there is a sense of levity with whistling and comradely shouting back and forth. I wonder if there is an important soccer match today. I have to wait for the minibus to fill up with passengers before we head off and this takes about half an hour. I spend the time trying to plan what to do next but I don’t come up with anything promising and instead walk around reading bumper stickers. I jot the best ones in my Moleskine:
This Taxi Stops Anywhere.
Thank God I Was Born Black.
If Women Were Good, God Would Have One.
All Whites Are Racists.
Don’t Rush Me, I’m On Time.
Three Missed Calls.
Wasted Time Never Returns.
When Days Are Dark Friends Are Few.
When the driver deems the taxi suffiently overcrowded we’re off. Apart from ploughing through the occasional red light, he is a good driver.
When I arrive at the house and ring the doorbell everything looks the same but I feel I have been away for years. I see him stomp up to the frosted glass and I wait while he shuffles keys, then opens the door. He squints at me, blinks, adjusts his glasses.
“Slade?” he frowns.
“Hi Dad,” I say. “I need a favour.”
My father pours me half a glass of beer from an open quart of Amstel. He slaps my back as he gives it to me, as if to say that it will sort me out.
We stand, awkward, in the kitchen.
“You fixed the doorbell,” I say. He presses his lips together.
“I had to. Some tsotsi tried to break in and made a mess of the damn gate. Had to re-wire the whole thing.”
All of a sudden my mind is clear of my own predicament.
“What? When did this happen? Are you okay?”
He unbuttons his shirt to reveal a continent of purple on his chest.
“Bugger smashed my chest in with a knobkerrie.”
I look at his liver-spotted hands holding open his shirt, the fabric trembling, the blood under his skin.
“Fucking savages,” I seethe. “You need to get out of this house. It’s too big for you. And the neighbourhood has gone to shit.”
He shakes his head. His pale eyes are moist.
“What more will it take? Next they will be in here slitting your throat with a bread knife!”
“Good God,” he says, taking a sip of his beer. “This isn’t Rhodesia, son.”
“Zimbabwe, Dad.”
“No, I meant Rhodesia. Night of the Long Knives, or something like that. Besides, there’s nothing of any value here to steal.”
I won’t argue with that.
“Have the cops been round?” I ask.
He buttons his shirt and picks up his beer.
“Yes, they took their time but when they arrived they took fingerprints. And the bloke filling out the report could read and write so I was pleasantly surprised.”
“No,” I say, “I mean, looking for me.”
“What?”
“The cops. Have they called?”
“Er…”
“Look Dad, I’m in some trouble.”
He looks at me long, as if he didn’t hear, then snaps into real time.
“Anything you need,” he says. He doesn’t ask what kind of trouble, he doesn’t round on me like I do him. He just looks at me and waits to hear what help I need.
“There has been a misunderstanding,” I say. “The police think I’ve done something and they want to arrest me. But I’m worried that if they do, they’ll stop looking for the person who actually did it. So I need to find that person.”
He frowns. “They can’t arrest you without evidence. Without a warrant.”
“There is plenty of evidence. Unfortunately it all seems to point to me.”
He looks into my eyes and something touches his face, as if he wants to tell me something, but then it clears.
“I need to get out of the city. Can I borrow the Merc?”
Dad has a Mercedes Benz from the 1950s that used to embarrass the hell out of me when I was a kid but it’s so old now, it’s cool. He keeps it as a spare car. Dad’s never been good at getting rid of things.
“Of course,” he says and leaves the room. When he gets back he hands the keys to me with a slight tremor, along with a wad of cash. I protest but he doesn’t say anything. He just presses the cash into my hands.
“I’ll pay you back,” I say. I move as if to leave but he puts a finger in the air as though he’s just remembered something. He opens his ancient fridge and retrieves a Cornish pasty still in its wax paper.
“I was saving it for dinner,” he smiles, handing it to me.
He walks me out to the car where he opens a padlock on the inside of the garage door. The door is one of those ancient ones with two long, heavy weights on either side, like metal punching bags. I shoulder my way in and try to do most of the work. As it gains momentum and gives way the light pours in and the world is lost in bronze dust particles and the scurrying things that live in abandoned places. We say goodbye. My father reminds me not to step on his footbrake too hard and I nod. I shake his hand and he pats me on the back. I climb in, praying to no one in particular, and it starts first time. I reverse into the street and Dad salutes me before he closes the garage door. I open the cubby hole to throw my things in when I see his wallet. I whisperswear and pull back into the drive. I try to open the garage door but it’s already locked so I go around to the front entrance. His spare house keys are on the car keys so I let myself in and call out to him. Wallet in hand I bound up the front steps. He is standing in the entrance hall with his rounded back to me, holding the phone up to his ear. No wonder he didn’t hear me. I’m about to call him again when I hear him say, “Yes, he’s just left. Yes, in the Merc. LDR 504 GP. Out of the city. No. No, he didn’t say.”
I place his wallet on a nearby chair and back soundlessly away.
35
HERE BE DRAGONS, OR,
ELBOW BACON
As I speed away from my crumbling family home, I try to imagine who it was he was talking to, but I decide I don’t want to think about it. I’m feeling pretty fragile to be honest, pretty fucking down-in-the-mouth and I don’t want to think of anything that will further retard my emotional state. I get on the highway, not knowing where I am going. I feel like pulling in to the closest bar and downing a few fingers of whisky but know if I do that I may as well drive straight to the cop shop and show them my wrists.
I have no idea who is behind this… this thing my life has become. This person who sends me letters and watches me from dark corners is interred so far in my head that I have begun to turn on myself. I have no idea where to even start looking. I drive for a long time before I have a vague idea. The thing that I have in common with this nebulous antagonist is, obviously, Eve. So if I start with Eve, start at the beginning, maybe I will find my way to this person. The problem with this idea is that I know virtually nothing about Eve’s past. If only I could trust Denise. Why would she never talk about Eve? Why would neither of them talk about growing up? I’m a writer, for God’s sake, not a private investigator. I get off the highway somewhere in Houghton and park the car on the shoulder of the road while I pull out my phone. The screen is cracked but it still seems to work. I Google Eve’s name but it is too wide a search, she has been in the media consistently for her art and there seem to be hundreds of entries on her latest exhibition alone. I Google ‘Denise Shaw’ but none of them is my Denise. Resisting the urge to throw the phone out of the window, I try to breathe and to focus. There is no air-con in the Merc and my skin is sticking to the cracked leather upholstery. I try to think of any clue she has ever possibly given me but I draw a blank. How could I have known her for so long, loved her, when I didn’t even know who she was or where she came from? And then, not learning from mistakes, go on to do the exact same thing to her shadowsister? I pull the photo of her family out of my pocket and search it for clues. It could be a picture of any (white) family in South Africa in the 70s: overdressed, overexposed. Probably taken after a Sunday Lunch. The mother with sticks for fingers and too many gold rings. Eve squirming under the gaze of the camera. Even the intimacy of a family portrait was too much for her. Despite the feigned formality of the occasion she is dressed like a boy, in shorts and a t-shirt. There is a kind of logo or insignia on the shirt but it’s small and the picture isn’t sharp. I need one of those programmes in CSI where they take a blurry photo from a hundred years ago and miraculously zoom in and sharpen it up to high res. It’s circular, with text on the circumference and some kind of graphic on the inside, but that’s all I can make out. I lean back into the car seat, close my eyes and think of Eve: I see her in her studio, bent over some finicky project, face and arms covered in paint and wallpaper glue, looking up at me as I tease her, her mouth showing one big, beautiful grin. The room darkens and Denise now stands where Eve was working. She is wearing Eve’s splattered work shirt but has nothing on underneath, and the paint is scarlet. She begins to lift the shirt over her…